The Critical Commentator

  Prof Sir Magdi Habib Yacoub is a retired professor of cardiothoracic surgery who established the heart transplantation centre at Harefield hospital. He performed the first combined heart and lung transplant in the UK, and set up the Chain of Hope charity, which helps to provide heart operations for children. He was born in Egypt in 1935 but moved to the UK in 1961. Portrait of a Doctor Francis Picabia (1879-1953) Photo Credit:: Tate [CC BY-NC-ND] "I'm totally committed to the NHS because I practised in other countries, including the US, and I am totally convinced that it is the best system. Why? Because it maintains the sacred relationship between the patient and the doctor. Obviously there are problems, and issues with funding, but  it remains the best system in the world. Ask a British person if they want to have the very best treatment  for themselves and their family, they will say yes. And then you ask them if they want to have the same for their neighbour, it's st...

 L ike triple-distilled whiskey, Irish pubs appear to have timeless appeal. They are staple settings in films, books and plays, draw tourists to Ireland, replicate themselves around the world and induce social media quests for the perfect snug and the perfect pint... Irish pubs are in trouble. They are vanishing from rural Ireland and many are struggling to survive in the capital... Since 2005, Ireland has lost a quarter of its pubs, more than 2,100, averaging 112 closures a year. Reasons cited include high taxes on alcohol, drink-driving laws, rising property prices and a fall in alcohol consumption... Boors Carousing Dutch School Photo Credit York Art Gallery [Public Domain]  Just over half of the population live within 300 metres of Ireland's 7,000 pubs and Share [Perry Share, a co-editor of The Irish Pub] said, pubs remained central to expressions of Irish culture. "Even if declining, the pub is still part of the fabric of everyday life," he added. "If it does di...

  When Tom Stoppard visited the refugee camp in Calais once known as the jungle , where thousands waited to cross the Channel , he was asked by a journalist whether it was possible that Britain's goodwill was being exploited by would-be immigrants and asylum seekers. Tom replied that such a thing might indeed be a possibility but that, even if it were, this was an argument about which he was happy to be historically on the wrong side. This reply has always seemed to me the most resonant remark made by any public figure in the last 20 years. It is hard to think of anyone else who would approach the question of illegal immigration with such concision and characteristic generosity. The Pipe of Freedom Thomas Stuart Smith (1813/14-1869) Photo Credit:The Stirling Smith Art Gallery & Museum [ CC BY-NC-ND ] As an immigrant himself from Czechoslovakia , Tom did more than any other playwright or novelist in his own lifetime to redefine Brtishness as something freedom-loving and open-...